The rue des Francs-Bourgeois was busy, the queues in front of the mont-de-piete of the Credit Municipal de Paris among the longest Kohler had ever seen. The wealthy, the poor, the middle class, all had come to pay homage to that great leveller of humanity, Ma Tante.
Four staff cars, their drivers waiting with engines running, were in a line of their own, their officers inside as prospective buyers of what had been left beyond the required length of time. Six months, was it, or now three?
‘Four,’ came the intuitive reply, Louis not liking what they were seeing, but where else were those who had no firm contacts in the black market supposed to go, if not here?
‘You’d better let me come with you,’ said Kohler. ‘You know how shirty those bastards behind the wickets can be. Muscle is the only thing they understand.’
‘And is it that you still don’t think I’ve got what it takes?’
Three pale-green tickets were dug out of one of those bottomless overcoat pockets. Always Louis was collecting the bits and pieces of each investigation.
‘So often, Hermann, it’s the little things that count. When I found these in Noelle Jourdan’s empty locker at the Hotel-Dieu, I knew I couldn’t resist a visit here.’
‘You’re enjoying yourself. Admit it.’
‘That girl has much to tell us and now we are about to pry the secrets from her but …’
‘Boemelburg will insist that we not bother wasting time with the robbery at Au Philateliste Savant.’
‘And that’s precisely why I’m making certain we do, especially as we were definitely not to have been assigned to that one.’
‘Noelle Jourdan didn’t pawn the collection.’
‘But it’s curious, isn’t it? Why pawn other items and not that one?’
‘Familiarity. Too frequent a visitor to this place?’
‘Perhaps, but then … ah, mais alors, alors, Hermann, was it that the girl realized how little Ma Tante was given to charity and wished to better herself?’
‘Or knew those tickets could be used to identify her.’
Good for Hermann. ‘But did the robbery of those stamps really have nothing whatsoever to do with the murders and assaults or has chance played its part by sending us to it?’
Chance could sometimes mean everything these days. ‘I’m waiting, Louis. I do know that for the lousy two thousand francs Le Matin paid her, the girl gave up a very promising career.’
‘One that obviously allowed her to acquire the Veronal her dear papa needed.’
‘A papa who should have been wearing his Legion d’honneur. And now what’s she to do, eh? Try her hand at making artillery shells or lorries and aircraft here for the Reich, or get on a train to there and leave that father behind?’
‘Or find some shopkeeper who’ll be willing to hire and not insist on getting into her?’
‘There has to have been a reason.’
‘And we have to find it, even if the theft of those stamps is totally unrelated to the rest.’
‘Which it can’t have been, can it?’
‘Not unless I’m very wrong.’
The tureen, of Augsburg silver circa 1770, was magnificent. Brought out to be laid on the counter of despair, its design incorporated the heads of several Chrysanthemum leucanthemum. ‘A priceless heirloom for such a poor household, Hermann. Mon Dieu, there was hardly any furniture in the flat and never a trace of anything like this.’
‘And that one?’ asked Kohler, still shouldering the curious out of the way.
‘A pilgrim bottle in Augsburg silver-gilt.’
‘Late seventeenth century,’ offered the mouse in the bow tie behind the wicket.
‘Engraved, Hermann. Peasants at table in an orchard. The mark of its maker, that of?’ asked Louis pleasantly enough.
‘Johann Christoph Treffler,’ swallowed Jerome Godet. These two were going to insist on confiscating the items. Monsieur le Directeur Ducasse, who had still not come back from lunch, would be furious and bound to dismiss him.
‘And the last?’ asked the one with the dueling scar who was still toying with the pistol he had lain on the counter.
‘Meissen, Herr …’
‘Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten? Louis, can you believe it? Tell him my name.’
‘It’s not necessary. Now please don’t argue, Herr Hauptmann. We haven’t time. An urgent meeting with Gestapo Boemelburg …’
‘Meissen, Inspectors. The work is most probably that of Heinrici, the date perhaps 1750.’
‘A gold-mounted, Commedia dell’ Arte double snuffbox, Herr Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter Kohler. The funds released to hold such objects, Agent Jerome Godet?’
Ah, merde! ‘One hundred francs for the box; one fifty for the bottle, and …’ It would do no good to lie. ‘Three hundred for the tureen.’
A fantastic bargain.
‘Pay him, Hermann. That way he’ll be certain to remember your name and not mine. Sign for the objects, too, of course, and tell him that they’ll be returned unless it’s discovered that they’ve been stolen, in which case, by having accepted them and not notifying the proper authorities, he’ll face a charge of compliance perhaps or even complicity.’
Out on the street, back in the Citroen, Hermann sighed as he fondly gripped the wheel of a car that wasn’t even his. ‘I enjoyed that, Louis. It was like old times. I stopped worrying about everything else.’
Newspapers littered the antique limewood desk that had been made larger by the addition of pine planks. Bien sur, Le Matin and Paris-Soir were there, but also the Berliner Zeitung and Das Schwarze Korps-that of the SS-Der Angriff as well, The Assault-Goebbels’s Berlin afternoon paper. All were splashed with the news from Paris and all were, no doubt, demanding that the crisis be settled and the streets made safe again.
‘Walter …’ hazarded St-Cyr. The Herein, the Come in, had been brutal.
‘SCHMETTERLINGE, LOUIS. DIE KLEINE SCHLAMPE WAS CAUGHT PUTTING THEM IN METRO CARRIAGES. HAND- shy;COLOURED PAPER STICKERS THE SIZE OF MY THUMBPRINT. RAF BULL’S-EYES ON THE WINGS, THE CROSS OF LORRAINE ON THE BODIES. VERDAMMTE HURE, SHE’LL HAVE TO BE SHOT!’
Butterflies were what these little stickers were called, though not always done in the shape of such but, ‘Walter …’
‘Putain de merde, what is wrong with you French? ORDNUNG MUSS SEIN!’
Fucking hell … order must prevail. The big hands were thrown out in defeat, the all but shaven, blunt grey head shaken in despair.
‘Ten hostages are not enough. Twenty will have to be chosen and she’ll have to be one of them. The Hoherer SS will insist on it. I’m sorry, Louis. It can’t be helped. Not this time.’
‘Walter, who was the girl?’
A name was searched for but couldn’t be found. The Nordic eyes, bagged by overwork and worry, were ever angry. ‘It was an ATTACK!’ came the shrill response. ‘WE THOUGHT WE HAD BROKEN THE BACK OF THE FTP IN DECEMBER. INFILTRATED, BETRAYED, WE HAD THEM ALL.’
But not quite. The Francs-Tireurs et Partisans …
‘COMMUNISTS. IMMIGRANTS-ROMANIANS, ITALIANS, JEWS, POLISH UNTERMENSCHEN!’
Subhumans.
‘At ten this morning, when you two were no doubt still asleep, one of them tossed a grenade into a lorry on the boulevard Haussmann and close enough for the avenue Foch to have heard the blast. French driver killed, French assistant killed, windows shattered, blood and glass all over the street and everyone rushing in to grab what meat they could and let the bastard get away.’ A breath was caught. ‘Chickens … Alive but a moment beforehand.’
And a black-market lorry, sighed Kohler inwardly and still standing behind Louis but towering over him as the chief would too. Fifty percent of those chickens would have already been removed by the boys on the controls, and as for the FTP, unlike other reseaux if they even existed, and they did, their whole policy was one of armed resistance, hence the hostages that would have to be shot.